The Massage Marketing Connection

You are creating packages and pricing for your massage therapy practice. You have services and products to sell in several prices ranges and you aren’t sure where to start.

Should you present the least expensive service first, the mid-priced product second ending with the most expensive? Or start with the mid-priced product? It seems like starting with the least expensive service first makes sense, because you don’t scare the prospect away with a high-ticket item.

But that’s NOT what you should do.

What you should do may go against what seems like common sense, but is proven to not only sell more products, but in the long-run results in clients spending more money overall.

The key to making more money overall and selling more massage therapy products and services is to sell the most expensive item first. Robert Cialdini gives an example in his book The Psychology of Persuasion of men’s clothing salesmen. If a man walks in and asks to look at suits, sweaters and other accessories you should always present him with the suit first. After deciding on a $500 suit, a $200 sweater or a $150 belt seems inexpensive and he is more likely to buy all of them.

And because he just decided on a nice suit he realizes he should have high quality accessories to go with it and is more likely to spend more.

Another example Cialdini gives is a strategy used by car salespeople. They first sell you on the price and style of the car. They make the car easy and affordable to buy. After you’ve agreed on the price and type of car, they then offer you smaller items to add on. Upgraded seats, a nice stereo system, etc. What’s a couple hundred more dollars to the $25,000 you are spending on your new car? All those accessories add to a nice chunk of profits in the end.

Offering the most expensive product first is called “the contrast principle” and automatically triggers certain responses in humans. It’s psychology.

Failing to use the contrast principle and selling the inexpensive items first will not only make the more expensive items seem and feeeeeel more expensive, but it actually causes the contrast principle to work against you – it causes the more expensive item to seem even more expensive that it actually is.

This principle works so effectively because of the mood or atmosphere created in the beginning. When used effectively the mood you create is leveraged on the secondary sales items.

Let’s take a closer look at why this principle really works so well. You can try this experiment yourself. Get three buckets and fill them with water. Fill one with hot water, one with very cold water and one with lukewarm water. Put your left hand in the hot water and your right in the cold water. After a minute or so take both hands out and place both hands in the lukewarm water at the same time.

When you feel is truly amazing! Logically you know the lukewarm water is one temperature, but both hands are experiencing something very different. The hand in the hot water feels like the water is very cold, while the other hand is feeling warmth.  Because of what they experienced before they were merged into the cold water.

What’s important to take away for your sales copy is to know what impression you want to make with your reader. Whether you want your product to seem expensive or inexpensive – the perception is influenced by what you present first.

About the author

Founder of A Marketing Connection and The Copywriting Institute, Kelly Robbins, MA, is an award winning author, copywriter and healthcare marketing coach/consultant. Kelly is a blogger for both ChiroEco and MassageMagazine and is the author of Marketing 101: Why Successful Alternative Healthcare Practitioners Specialize as well as co-author of The Practice Evolution Success Kit. She also publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection, a free e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. Contact Kelly to receive her free report, “5 Critical Mistakes Healthcare Marketers Make that Lose Sales and Plummet Profits” at www.AMarketingConnection.com or 303-460-0285.

Do you know what you are doing wrong?

Today’s massage marketing environment is substantially different than it was even ten years ago. If you’ve been doing the same types of marketing for years and they were once successful but are not as effective now there is a good reason for that.

Pull vs Push your messages to others

Society has changed and the way people expect to hear from you has changed. Where marketing and communications used to be your practice sending information “out” or pushing information to patients and prospects, it is now about you brining them in or “pulling” them to you. Communicating in our society has changed and your marketing communications should reflect that change from a push to a pull strategy. Pushing your information out to anyone that would listen in order to initiate a conversation worked in the past, but no more. Now there is a need to pull prospects and clients into your sphere – this is today’s communication. This is how to connect with people today.

How Obama changed the face of social media

A great example of this was Obama’s presidential campaign. I did a ton of research on this for the healthcare conference I did a workshop in January. Obama did an awesome job “marketing” his campaign and run for presidency. His messaging played an important role (for change) as well as the WAYS he connected with people.

Obama was able to raise over 200 million dollars through a pull marketing strategy. He did this by pulling people in one small step at a time. He received absolutely none of that money from businesses. He built an email list of 3.5 million people in a very short time span. In a very easy and nonintrusive way he simply asked people to join his list to keep up to date on what was going on. He would then ask them to donate small amounts, $10, $15, $20 increments (this is just like asking people to take small steps to improve their health). He spoke to them through short text messages through twitter and YouTube. All with their permission. All through short, concise marketing communications.

How do we know this? Simply take a look at what’s going on with new communication trends. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all about sending short, concise messages to people that asked to or agreed to hear from you.

Why the change?

There is so much “noise” going on around us and we are all so bombarded with advertisements that we simply can’t process it all.

So healthcare consumers are electing who and what they want to hear about, just like consumers in any other industry.

Bringing this back to you and your practice, look at what types of marketing you are doing. Are you sending things out, out, out and not asking for a commitment or an action from your community? Are you doing the same old post cards, the same old grocery cart brand awareness?

If you are not asking prospects to say “yes” to hear from you they are probably not listening. You don’t have their buy-in. You are pushing.

What are some pull strategies that work well?

Anything where you are getting your client or prospect to say “yes I want to hear from you”. An ezine or this blog is a perfect example. You agreed to receive it. You learned a little bit about it, obviously are interested in healthcare marketing, and gave us your name and email address to learn more.

Blogs, podcasts, newsletters and ezines where the reader has asked to receive the information (rather than just sending it to them), are just a few examples of ways to incorporate a pull strategy into your marketing rather than the current push strategy you may be using.

If you are seeing your marketing is not as effective as it once was understand there is a reason. Look at how you are connecting with both your clients and your prospects.

Contact us at Kelly@AMarketingConnection.com or call 303-460-0285 for more information.

About the author

Founder of A Marketing Connection and The Copywriting Institute, Kelly Robbins, MA, is an award winning author, copywriter and healthcare marketing coach/consultant. Kelly is the author of Marketing 101: Why Successful Alternative Healthcare Practitioners Specialize as well as co-author of The Practice Evolution Success Kit.

Kelly Robbins also publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection, a free e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. Contact Kelly to receive her free report, “5 Critical Mistakes Healthcare Marketers Make that Lose Sales and Plummet Profits” at www.AMarketingConnection.com or 303-460-0285.

1. Life and success are all about how you are BEING, not what you are DOING

2. Know in the depth of your soul you are here to serve others

3. Selling is about something you do FOR someone, not TO someone

4. Quiet your mind enough to listen to your intuition

5. There is no competition. Your success or failure is all about you and only you

6. Always BE 100% your true self. Not how you think you should act or how you perceive everyone else to be

7. When you are serving others act as a channel for spirit. Forget about your needs for the moment and focus solely on theirs

8. Be vigilant in controlling your thoughts

9. Set your intention, then see and feeeel yourself achieving it

10. Look for opportunities in unexpected places. Always

About the author

Founder of A Marketing Connection and The Copywriting Institute, Kelly Robbins, MA, is an award winning author, copywriter and healthcare marketing coach/consultant. Kelly is the author of Marketing 101: Why Successful Alternative Healthcare Practitioners Specialize as well as co-author of The Practice Evolution Success Kit.

Kelly Robbins also publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection, a free e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. Contact Kelly to receive her free report, “5 Critical Mistakes Healthcare Marketers Make that Lose Sales and Plummet Profits” at www.AMarketingConnection.com or 303-460-0285.

 
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a million goals, plans and ideas and not enough time in the day to put a dent in any of them. I may pick one or two of my ideas and go gang busters working to get it going, and then another fun thing comes along and I get excited and go gang busters getting that one up and running.

There are a few downsides to this. The biggest being I am in the middle of a bunch of really great projects that aren’t done! It’s easy to see how this can happen next year too with all of us excited about our New Year’s resolutions. What happens to a lot of us is either my scenario above or the opposite happens – nothing because you don’t know where to start.

With that said, I have a recommendation on how to handle this strange phenomenon this year….make very small commitments that you know you can fulfill. By keeping your commitments small and simple you will have more flexibility to change, and more freedom to try different ways to keep your commitments.

Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about…

You may commit to doing one additional marketing piece or trying one new marketing strategy a month. Something simple. By the end of the year that really means that you will be trying 12 different marketing methods.

Another idea is to commit a certain amount of time to a specific project. For example, if you have a goal to write a book this year or develop products to sell online, set aside one hour a week (or a day – whatever you can commit too) that is devoted to meeting this one goal.

I am not going to say I am going to work out every day after I drop the kids off at school. Yes, while being healthy is important, making such a stringent commitment realistically won’t happen. A better commitment may be to promise myself that I will work out consistently this year. For me that could be two times a week as opposed to my sometimes every day and other times nothing for three months.

Other ideas of small goals that can make a big difference in your day are to:

– Only check emails at 8:00 and 6:00
– Have a cup of coffee once a week with a new friend or business acquaintance
– Take two hours off in the middle of the week that’s free time
– Do one self-improvement tool or book or something a month
– Post on other people’s blogs once a week

But the deal is whatever commitment you do make, you HAVE to stick to it. So keep your promises simple and realistic.

If you’ve taken the time to develop long term goals and strategies for your business (or your personal life) that is great. You’ve done more than most people I know. If you don’t want this years resolutions or commitments to fall by the wayside, break those long term goals into super short smaller commitments that you know you can keep.

In issue 50 of our ezine, The Healthcare Marketing Connection, I talked about discipline and keeping your word to yourself. Now is the time to be thinking about what commitments you do make and your ability (or inability) to keep them. For us entrepreneurs and small business owners, oftentimes ANY commitment we make is one we make to ourselves only. No one knows about them, and no on else will hold you accountable to keeping them. Plug your commitments into a calendar, schedule the time with yourself to get them done, and don’t make a commitment or resolution unless you know you will keep it.

No one else knows you are making it, and no one knows if you break it.

Except the all important you.

Contact us at Kelly@AMarketingConnection.com or call 303-460-0285 for more information.

About the author
Founder of A Marketing Connection and The Copywriting Institute, Kelly Robbins, MA, is an award winning author, copywriter and healthcare marketing coach/consultant. Kelly is the author of Marketing 101: Why Successful Alternative Healthcare Practitioners Specialize as well as co-author of The Practice Evolution Success Kit.

Kelly Robbins also publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection, a free e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. Contact Kelly to receive her free report, “5 Critical Mistakes Healthcare Marketers Make that Lose Sales and Plummet Profits” at www.AMarketingConnection.com or 303-460-0285.

Your marketing promotions need to reflect this

Everyone I know is feeling stressed lately. I hear stressful comments daily about job losses, the terrible state of the economy and worries about family. For many everyday Americans stress is the number one thing affecting their lives and their health.

As a healthcare marketer it’s your responsibility to look for ways you can help people live healthier lives. It’s your responsibility to find ways to connect with the people that need you.

Know that most people are aware of their high stress and many are looking for ways to lessen that stress. Ask yourself what you can do to help your community reduce or better manage their stress?

In a recent study by the American Psychological Association, in June of 2008 more people reported physical and emotional symptoms of stress than in 2007 and nearly half said their stress had increased over last year. People reported more fatigue, feelings of irritability or anger, lying awake at night as a result of stress in addition to lack of interest or motivation, fatigue, feeling depressed or sad, and headaches and muscular tension. You can read more here.

If you are looking for new ways to connect with patients I recommend you talk to them about managing their stress. You can do two things:

1. Listen to what patients are saying when they come in. Sometimes people are sharing important information with you and it appears to be idle chit chat unless you are paying attention. I am asking you to really listen. What is causing them stress and what symptoms are you seeing in your practice? An example may be losing sleep. Perhaps you’ve had several patients tell you they haven’t been sleeping well. (Hint: This may have absolutely nothing to do with why they came in to see you.)

Here is what a quick Google search turned up for me on stress and sleep disturbances:

“A new poll finds almost a third of all Americans are unable to get a good night sleep because they are worrying about their finances, the economy or their jobs.” According to a recent article in HealthDay, Dr. Bruce Nolan, medical director of the Sleep Center at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, says sleep is sensitive to things that go on during the day…”

You take this information and apply it to your practice. How can massage or meditation or acupuncture help reduce stress? How can it help your patients sleep better?

Educate and share this information with your patients AND use this information in your marketing efforts in your community.

2. Use the information your patients are giving you to create packages and marketing promotions. If you hear several patients tell you they can’t sleep or their stomach is upset all the time and you think it may be stress related use this information to help them and others in an easy and affordable way. Create “stress reduction packages” or “reduce your stress day”. Create awareness and offer options to help.

I did this recently with my “Practice Specialization Package”. I had several clients come to me that didn’t need ongoing marketing services, they simply needed help narrowing their focus so the marketing they were doing was more effective. They needed help clearly defining their target market or niche. How many times do I have to get hit over the head to realize if five or six people are asking for something there are probably a ton more that could use the same guidance? (The answer is too embarrassing to mention) I created an affordable, easy and doable package and sure enough, practitioners are finding it very helpful.

What information keeps smacking you in the face that you aren’t recognizing?

Let’s look at two more examples of how you can use the theme of stress to create packages for your practice.

“Touching helps couples reduce stress. New research in Psychosomatic Medicine shows that couples may be able to enhance one another’s health by being more physically affectionate with one another.” Our new massage training for couples to reduce stress workshop can help…

Here’s one more final example,

“According to a study in the journal of pediatrics, living in a stressful household can increase a child’s chances of becoming obese. That’s why the chiropractors at Stanley Shores Chiropractic created a stress reduction package for families. Combining stress reduction techniques with a proper alignment and nutrition counseling creates an overwhelming sense well being and benefits families all around.”

Take an honest look at what you can do to help. The health of your community depends on it!

Would you like help coming up with a promotional ideas for your practice? Or not sure which niche to target? We are happy to help! You can sign-up for the Practice Specialization Package by clicking here or by giving us a call at 303-460-0285.

To Your Success!

About the author

Founder of A Marketing Connection and The Copywriting Institute, Kelly Robbins, MA, is an award winning author, copywriter and healthcare marketing coach/consultant. Kelly is the author of Marketing 101: Why Successful Alternative Healthcare Practitioners Specialize as well as co-author of The Practice Evolution Success Kit.

Kelly Robbins also publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection, a free e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. Contact Kelly to receive her free report, “5 Critical Mistakes Healthcare Marketers Make that Lose Sales and Plummet Profits” atwww.AMarketingConnection.com or 303-460-0285.

There are many ways to generate leads for your massage practice. One of the fastest, least expensive and most powerful ways to generate leads is through joint ventures.

Having a joint venture with another business means “joining forces” with another business or practitioner that has a similar target market. By joining forces you are able to benefit each other and each of your prospective clients.

Some examples of joint ventures may be an acupuncture practice and a yoga studio working together to help clients reduce stress. A massage therapist and a local health club or personal trainer referring clients to each other. A vitamin shop and a running store teaming together to promote techniques on optimizing performance to both of their clients.

Joint ventures work in a variety of ways. Businesses can advertise together, refer clients to each other, create packages together, and share client lists to name a few things. Truly, your imagination is all that stops you from coming up with other ideas.

Let’s take a detailed look at some common joint venture techniques massage therapists have successfully used in the past:

• Joint marketing. Joining forces in marketing and advertising endeavors can both reduce advertising costs as well as improve the reach of an advertisement. Look outside the massage therapy arena as well as in. Stretch yourself to think outside the box. You can implement a formal referral program with specific businesses. 

• Creating “packages” with another business. Look for businesses that your existing client base has an interest in, and that complement your business and that are easy to integrate products and services with each other.

For example, a massage therapist that has a patient base consisting of many young mothers may partner with a local dance studio or mother of preschoolers group (mops) to give talks on health and safety.

Another idea is to partner with local sports teams. A massage therapist may be the “official sponsor” of the local recreation center as well as most of the sports teams (such as soccer, golf, lacrosse, etc). They often have staff at events and publish health articles in rec center publications as well as have handouts, etc at the front desk. In return, the rec center and sports teams offer more value to players and their families for no additional charge. The clinic also has information for their patients about what’s going on at the rec center. It’s a win/win for both.

Another example may be a massage therapist that partners with a local restaurant and health spa to create a “bridal party package”. Brides can purchase these packages as thank-you gifts for their bridesmaids or for a “pre-wedding party” for the bridal party itself. By working together these three businesses are able to help the bride with the problem of a meaningful thank-you gift for her bridesmaids and three businesses are able to attract new clients in a unique, easy and fun way.

• Refer clients to another business exclusively. Referring clients to another business is an inexpensive and solid way to grow your business. Forming an exclusive relationship with another business creates a strong relationship and a solid referral network for all involved. You may find your clients are familiar with one business, let’s use the yoga studio example, and are likely to have a positive impression of them. If you are affiliated with the yoga studio, even recommended by them that immediately separates you in the clients eyes from most other options, simply because you are referred.
   
• Sharing client lists. This is an easy and popular joint venture opportunity for businesses large and small. Think physical mailings, handouts, email and ezines. Joint venture opportunities can range from swapping ads and sponsorships to recommending each other as resources with discounts and coupons. Having links to each other’s websites is a common technique that is simple to do too.

Joining forces with other businesses allows you to serve many of your patients needs – even ones that you don’t provide. And it allows you to connect with people that you otherwise may not have.

One of the best ways to find joint venture partners is to have a clear vision of your target market and a clear understanding of what niche is attracted to your practice. Our “Practice Specialization Package” at A Marketing Connection may be just what you need to get your marketing out of stagnate mode and into profitability.

Contact us at Kelly@AMarketingConnection.com or call 303-460-0285 for more information.

About the author

Founder of A Marketing Connection and The Copywriting Institute, Kelly Robbins, MA, is an award winning author, copywriter and healthcare marketing coach/consultant. Kelly is the author of Marketing 101: Why Successful Alternative Healthcare Practitioners Specialize as well as co-author of The Practice Evolution Success Kit.

Kelly Robbins also publishes The Healthcare Marketing Connection, a free e-zine on healthcare marketing tips. Contact Kelly to receive her free report, “5 Critical Mistakes Healthcare Marketers Make that Lose Sales and Plummet Profits” at www.AMarketingConnection.com or 303-460-0285.